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Howdy! I hope you all had a great weekend. This week I’m thinking of continuing the adventure with the Fuji X system. I hope it’s not starting to sound like I work for Fuji…because I don’t. They have no idea who I am. I’m just excited about this new system because it’s light weight, small and more affordable. It’s a real joy to carry around and use.

Today’s Photo – Well, this is a scene I would never get tired of photographing. I could photograph it every day and never get bored. I love this bridge. Funny side note: While I was photographing this, a family of raccoons ran under my tripod.

Whenever I see a local camera shop (or bike or guitar shop) I feel reassured about the state of the world. As a kid, I’d drive store owners nuts. I’m sure they knew I wasn’t going to buy anything but I’d play guitars, look at cameras and ask all sorts of questions. It was nice to see a few shops out in San Francisco this weekend. They have some really cool guitar and bike shops too.

Photographer’s Note – As my adventures with the Fuji X system continues, I have found that I’m lacking a wide angle lens. Fuji doesn’t make one yet. So I rented the 12mm Carl Zeiss lens for this trip. Wow, what a cool lens. Pretty darn sharp and really well built. This image was shot, hand held at 1/30 of a second. Tripods…we don’t need no stinking tripods.

Just got off a delayed flight back from SF. I’m exhausted, but I wanted to share a quick out of camera .jpg from the Fuji x100s experiment. More details after I get some sleep. In short…the X system is pretty darn cool!

Ahh….California Street in the mystical City By The Bay. Oh how I love San Francisco. The architecture, the sea, the people….I love everything about this great city. You can easily walk around and see iconic landmark after iconic landmark. I actually conducted an experiment when I was there last. I walked around town for a week shooting with exclusively with my Nikon D700 and 28-300 VR. Well, that and some iPhone. You can read about the experiment over on my review of the Nikon 28-300 VR.

This was one of the most creatively heartbreaking images I had ever shot. The night before, the staff of the Fairmont (find out more about it in our travel guide) arranged for me to photograph the sunrise from the hotel’s roof. Pretty cool right?!?! After hanging out and chatting with a very friendly security guard, the sun slowly made its way up. Not being familiar with a San Francisco sunrise and not wanting to overstep my welcome, I gave up, shot this photo and returned to my room. I peeked out the window only to see a hint of what I was sure was the most incredible sunrise I have ever seen. Imagine all those clouds lit up as if they were on fire…well, I never made it to the roof in time to photograph it. That sunrise will forever be my white whale…it was the one that got away. Ah well…it made for a good story and this photo turned out alright.

Photographer’s Note – This is a single image shot with a Nikon D700 and 17-35mm 2.8 (I longed for that lens for over a decade). I brought it to life with Lightroom 4 and a few Nik Software filters. Did you see that you can get the entire Nik Collection for only $149.00 now…WOW!!!

Click Here To Get It – If you use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC you save even more money and get it for $126.00…yesterday it was $500!